1. Field of the Invention
The present application relates to fast localization of electrical failures on an integrated circuit.
2. Related Art
The fabrication of integrated circuits is an extremely complex process that may involve hundreds of individual operations. For a number of reasons, defects can be introduced into the integrated circuits during these operations. For example, in photoresist and photomask operations, the presence of contaminants such as dust, minute scratches and other imperfections in the patterns on the photomasks can produce defective patterns on the semiconductor wafers, resulting in defective integrated circuits.
Defective integrated circuits may be identified both by visual inspection under high magnification and by electrical tests. Once a defective integrated circuit has been identified, the location of the defect in the integrated circuit is typically determined to permit closer inspection of the defect. Conventional techniques for detecting and localizing the defects typically test integrated circuits individually, which can be time consuming, particularly when the number of integrated circuits being tested is large.